Recently there was a meteor shower and I was up. I grabbed some Oreos and tiptoed through the house and out the front door. I laid down and watched the show. It wasn't as spectacular as I had hoped. I laid there for 15 minutes and saw 2. I also remembered that I had missed an important personal tradition this year.
July 4, 1991 - I had been living out of a backpack for a few weeks. My friend, Michelle, and I were traveling through Europe. We had a Eurail Pass, passport, and airplane tickets home. Besides that, we had no schedule. We had already visited four other countries and slept in hostels, seedy hotels, bed and breakfasts, trains, and train stations. It was an amazing time. We were completely drunk on our youth, good health and freedom.
But we were also getting tired. Physically tired wasn't really the issue. We slept on trains and buses when we could. Mostly, though, we tried to stay awake and experience it all. I think it may have been a little bit of homesicknesses yet I wasn't ready to go home. I was meeting people and making new friends ("Don't talk to strangers" doesn't apply when you're traveling through Europe), drinking in the sights and trying to commit them to memory, and buying as much chocolate as I could fit into my bag.
Yet I missed stability.
This particular night we were staying in Salzburg, Austria when I suddenly decided to go running by myself. I ran for awhile and then up a hill. Before turning around I stopped, struck by the beauty of the clear sky and bright stars. As I looked, I noticed the Big Dipper, the most discernible constellation to me. This being the same constellation I looked for and found in the night sky hundreds of times from home.
The stars being so bright, I was able to see the Little Dipper as well and I didn't feel unsettled anymore. I had found a little piece of the sky that knew me.
18 years later I find myself staring up at the sky, looking for the beacon that told me I was still home. Every 4th of July I make it a point to spend a moment or two connecting to those same stars. One of which gave great joy to many 2,000 years ago and has led to many souls coming home.
And so I laid on the grass and thanked those stars for being there and guiding the shepherds, the kings, and the downtrodden, and telling my heart that I am still home.
July 4, 1991 - I had been living out of a backpack for a few weeks. My friend, Michelle, and I were traveling through Europe. We had a Eurail Pass, passport, and airplane tickets home. Besides that, we had no schedule. We had already visited four other countries and slept in hostels, seedy hotels, bed and breakfasts, trains, and train stations. It was an amazing time. We were completely drunk on our youth, good health and freedom.
But we were also getting tired. Physically tired wasn't really the issue. We slept on trains and buses when we could. Mostly, though, we tried to stay awake and experience it all. I think it may have been a little bit of homesicknesses yet I wasn't ready to go home. I was meeting people and making new friends ("Don't talk to strangers" doesn't apply when you're traveling through Europe), drinking in the sights and trying to commit them to memory, and buying as much chocolate as I could fit into my bag.
Yet I missed stability.
This particular night we were staying in Salzburg, Austria when I suddenly decided to go running by myself. I ran for awhile and then up a hill. Before turning around I stopped, struck by the beauty of the clear sky and bright stars. As I looked, I noticed the Big Dipper, the most discernible constellation to me. This being the same constellation I looked for and found in the night sky hundreds of times from home.
The stars being so bright, I was able to see the Little Dipper as well and I didn't feel unsettled anymore. I had found a little piece of the sky that knew me.
18 years later I find myself staring up at the sky, looking for the beacon that told me I was still home. Every 4th of July I make it a point to spend a moment or two connecting to those same stars. One of which gave great joy to many 2,000 years ago and has led to many souls coming home.
And so I laid on the grass and thanked those stars for being there and guiding the shepherds, the kings, and the downtrodden, and telling my heart that I am still home.
Oh I love this post, very poignant! We are star gazers too and even though I never back packed through Europe, when my husband used to be deployed on the USS Nimitz we knew we gazed at the same sky each night!
ReplyDeleteI love star gazing (especially after a bottle of wine) although I haven't a clue what names the various stars have. When we emigrated to the other side of the world it was strange looking at the night sky and not recognising any of the patterns. We have had to get to know a new sky over many bottles of wine. A hard job but somebody has to do it!
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